Front Range Community College’s 10-minute student play festival begins this week on the Larimer Campus. One of the featured plays is “This Haunting Red,” written by Mitch Hartcroft. It is about a transgender man and his haunted apartment. He calls two paranormal experts — an empath and a psychologist — to see what’s going on.
“He ends up learning that there are scarier things out [in] the world other than ghosts,” Hartcroft said.
The inspiration for “This Haunting Red” stems from an incident when Hartcroft was working in retail. Hartcroft, who is transgender and nonbinary, hadn’t started physically transitioning yet and experienced a lot of misgendering.
“Even though I had the pronouns on my nametag, people would give me snide remarks about it. And I remember getting home super exhausted after a long day. And I went, ‘You know what? I'm going to write my feelings,’” they said.
Hartcroft has been a writer for 17 years and likes the horror genre, but playwriting is new. They chose to use an allegory when writing the play: a haunting.
“A lot of transgender folks, when they have to look back into who they were in the past, like before your transitions, it's always going to be there,” they said. “It's literally a ghost that's haunting you and trails you throughout life.”
Media watchdog group GLAAD releases an annual report that analyzes the diversity of LGTBQ characters on tv shows. The most recent study found 42 regular and recurring transgender characters — up from 29 the previous year. On the Netflix tv show “The Umbrella Academy,” one character was rewritten to be transgender after actor Elliott Page came out as trans in 2020. This creative choice inspired Hartcroft.
“I think that was so revolutionary to witness and like mainstream media that I went, ‘Wow, it is, it is possible. Like we're working towards that,’” they said. “I hope to see more of that in the future.”
Dana Lynn Formby, FRCC theater instructor and festival director, chose the plays that will be featured. She was immediately drawn to "This Haunting Red" and got goosebumps when she heard Hartcroft’s first draft. Formby says the main character, who is being haunted by this thing that’s not him and needs to leave, is an incredible metaphor.
“That, I think, translates for people who have not had that experience to be like, ‘oh, it's not a choice.’ It gives a very clear definition of what it is to be trans, I think,” Formby said.
Formby is a playwright too, and has worked in the industry for nearly two decades. While the theater is often seen as an inclusive place, she says that’s not exactly true. People need to see themselves represented on the stage to feel welcome there.
“The fight is really hard. It's not only hard for transgender folk; it's very hard for people of color,” she said. “The theater right now is sort of in a reckoning. And it's mirroring a lot [of] what this nation is going through.”
The play almost didn’t make it into production. According to the casting note, the lead character is to be played by a trans-masculine actor — a term that can be used to describe someone who was assigned female at birth but identifies as masculine. The original actor dropped out because he didn’t think he was the right person for the role. Erin Kwiatkowski, the festival’s stage manager, identifies as trans-masculine, and they immediately stepped in.
“I would have hated to see this play sort of get scrapped just because we couldn't find the right person to be the lead,” Kwiatkowski said.
The 25-year-old is in their third semester at FRCC and wants to work in theater after graduation, probably in a backstage job like costume, lighting or stage management. But for now, they are grateful to have this role and bring the play to the stage.
“I feel like it was written in a way that sort of brings that forward to the audience in a way that I feel like anybody could understand, whether you're part of the LGBT community or not,” they said.
That’s what Hartcroft wants as well, for people to connect to the play's themes no matter who they are. The 32-year-old is a first-generation college student and recently graduated with an associate of arts degree. Hartcroft is a freelance ghostwriter and plans to pursue a career as a novelist or playwright.
“Trans protagonists aren't exactly common yet, so I'm hoping that we'll get there one day,” they said.
There isn’t a lot of data on how many transgender people are working in the theater. But history was made on Broadway this fall when transgender actor Angelica Ross played Roxie Hart in the musical Chicago. She’s the first openly transgender woman in a leading role.
